The invention relates to a rail-cleaning locomotive for electrical toy and model trains with a cleaning unit, comprising polishing disks rotated by an electric motor and lying on the rails.
Such rail-cleaning locomotives for cleaning the rails and, with that, primarily for ensuring good electrical contact between the current-carrying rails and the current collectors of a vehicle driving thereon have already been proposed in various embodiments. Aside from arrangements, which provide clean grinding blocks dragging over the rails, constructions of the initially-described type have also already become known, for which electrically driven polishing disks or polishing rollers are driven, which must be constructed significantly wider than the rails, so that they do not lose contact with the rail even when taking curves. For one such rail-cleaning apparatus described in the German Offenlegungsschrift 26 25 582, the grinding or polishing rollers obtain their driving power from the driving motor of the locomotive. This, however, creates considerable difficulties in practice. For example, if there are variations in the driving speed of the rail-cleaning locomotive, there is also a change in the grinding performance, which is troublesome to a very high degree. In addition, especially when a high grinding performance is desired, the driving speed would also be correspondingly higher which, in turn, contributes to the fact that the power in the grinding rollers is not fully utilized since, because of the high speed, intensive cleaning of the rail surfaces cannot take place. It is equally undesirable that, due to the elastic contact between the grinding rollers and the rail surfaces, the locomotive is lifted by the impact point of the grinding rollers, which at the very least contributes to the fact that a lesser contacting pressure is available for the running wheels, which is also very burdensome.
A rail-cleaning car, which is proposed in the German Utility Patent G 86 31 074.7 and inserted in a train without its own driving mechanism, can also not provide a satisfactory remedy for the problems above. The grinding or polishing rollers are disposed together with their own driving motor in a part suspended elastically in the car between the wheel axes. Here also, the difficulty arises that, on the one hand, a high driving power for the cleaning motor is required. However, because the supply voltage is supplied over the rail, this leads in turn to a simultaneous effect on the speed of the locomotive which, when the locomotive and the cleaning unit are separated by the installation of the cleaning unit in a separate, subsequent car, causes very appreciable coordination problems.
Finally, a further rail-cleaning car has also already been proposed in the German Utility Patent G 83 14 477.3, for which the cleaning brushes, in conjunction with vacuum cleaners disposed behind them, can completely remove the dust brushed off from the rail. However, such brushing apparatuses are unsuitable for a good contact with the rail, since they cannot remove smudges such as fat and abraded rubber from the rail surfaces. In other respects, the same difficulties are associated with the arrangement of this Utility Patent as with those already described with respect to the Utility Patent G 86 31 074.7.